Error T3 Box 52 and 53

[GWGWGW]

PS its interesting  At least for me it shows that if you have T3 with content in 21 it should change what you owe/refund number independent of whether you have something in 52/53. if you set 21 to 0 and nothing in 52/53 it should increase refund and decrease what one owes

However, it seems if you delete 21  in something that has no 52/53 in the original T3 it does not change in turbotax whether you delete value in 21. But as soon as you add a value into 52/53 it changes the same amount whether you artificially deleted the value in 21 or left it in.

I get that whether I change the values through the form or easy step

That suggests that turbotax assumes that every T3 with a value in 21 also has a value in 52/53

and so really makes its judgments based on 52/53 not 21. 

It also means you have to add a value into 52/53 that is not in the original T3, which I find    problematic as it changes the validity of the slips if I have to add artificially values in turbotax that are not in the original slip. 

[laurent26]

Fully agree with your observations. The liberal government introduced a fiscal change that would have capital gains after June 24 taxed at a higher rate for any amount higher than 250K. In this context I assume that every financial institution should have reported a value for box 52 and 53. But of course if your capital gains after June 24 are less than 250K (99% of Canadians I assume) then it makes no difference. You can enter it all in Box 53 and taxation will be no different.

As you've observed TurboTax expects an amount in Box 53 to calculate the applicable tax on your T3 capital gains. If you only report an amount in Box 21 then TT will not deduct any amount. I suspect that some TurboTax users with T3 capital gains reported only in Box 21 and not Box 53 could have a bad surprise if CRA recalculates their tax owing since TT did not deduct any.

Anyway this is a tricky and easily confusing topic: I understand the fiscal change was not always well understood (and lately it has been deferred to January 2026!), financial institutions haven't always updated their reporting methods and TT has a weird way to handle this. All of this this is on top of the initial problem where TT does not add correctly box 52 and 53 and this is quite bad for a broadly used tax return application. I am quite surprised TT did not fix this problem (and asked users to use a workaround).

[GWGWGW]

Yes, but it is troubling if the slips one is receiving by mail miss details needed. And the error message on the 52/53 most people would only think it applies too the T3 that mention something in 52/53 not the T3 that do not list 52/53. I only made the  jump after seeing your mail (thanks!!!) and then I read what is written under box 21 in the small print of the physical slip and they changed the wording from last year and this year. 

This year it says that 21= whatever is in 30,52,53,54,55,56,57. Based on that every slip had to have something in some of these boxes to match 21.

As such my bank simply did not do their job and sent incomplete slips :-(.

But people might have caught on to that if the error message would have been worded better.

And the banks could have alerted people.

And Turbotax could have uncoupled 21 from the 50's boxes 🙂

Ah well for me it worked now.  Thanks to YOUR mail!!!!!!

[Mcpats]

A simple fix is to input Boxes 52 and 53 on the second boxes - not in foreign income boxes. The two boxes add up to what is in Box 21 on the T3. 

[GWGWGW]

Yes but my issue was that there are T3 slips that have only an item in box 21 and none in 52 or 53. So your scenario does not apply

[Billou59]

Thanks Sparky 2025, had the same issue but your fix worked!